The Tom of Finland Art & Culture Festival is the world’s largest erotic art fair. The first installment of the Festival was held in 1993. Since then, it has grown into a truly global affair, bringing Queer artists and art lovers together from all over the world.
The Festival is Tom of Finland Foundation’s yearly programming effort to bring together artists, galleries and patrons from all over the globe in a socially friendly setting to network as well as buy and sell works. It serves as the biggest public showcase for the Foundation and its mission to protect, preserve, and promote Queer and erotic art.
As the Foundation celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, the Festival will be held in London, Berlin and Los Angeles. Past festivals have included renowned artists such as Pol Anglada, Rick Castro, Marc DeBauch, Rubén Esparza, Markus Hoffmann-Achenbach, Łukasz Leja, Matt Pagett, Pâme, Sal Salandra, Stuart Sanford, Suzanne Shifflett, and Hector Silva. The Festival has been held in various places from TOM House (the Foundation’s headquarters), Second Home London & Hollywood, prideART at The Knast in Berlin, The Standard Hotel London and Soho Warehouse in Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles installment also features current artists from the Artist-in-Residence program, which is a crucial part of the Foundations artist education efforts.
In 2023, the Festivals in Berlin, London and Los Angeles collectively gathered together over 1,800 visitors, 80 artists, vendors and galleries from the United States, Mexico, Finland, United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, France, Spain and Ireland.
Berlin is curated by Richard Villani, Eric Le Rouge & Konstantinos Menelaou.
Mad Kate | the Tide are a post punk conceptual performance project with Jacopo Bertacco (Tide of Sound) on guitar, loops, electronics, Kathryn Fischer aka Mad Kate on vocals, poetry, contact mics and performance and Sara Neidorf on drums.
This performance celebrates the release of their double single “Generate Content / This is the Hand”.
Their 2020 EP This Morning Waking about was about genderbased violence and they are now finishing their LP sexWORKperformanceART about the relationship between labour, art and the body. Their Discography also includes ALIVE:ness (LP/eBook 2014), Combinatorics (EP/eBook 2013), will be ready – the Teufelsberg session – (LP Freudian Slit Records 2013) and Leather Jacket (Single/remix 2012)
Composed in dialogue with conceptual explorations and texts, Mad Kate | the Tide’s dynamic sonicscapes mix punk, acoustic folk, psychedelic rock and spoken word. They form the backbone for honest, sometimes darkly provocative performance art and movement which provokes and stirs its audiences.
In their multimedia work ALIVE:ness they ask: To what extent are we alive in each other’s lives —physically, emotionally, electronically, living or dead — taking into account our contemporary context of virtual interaction, shape-shifting and polyphysical interpretations of our own identities? What does it mean to be present when the terms of our own existence are relative to how we interact physically and virtually with those most close to us? What does it mean to queer our identity in a global context in order to be more effective activists and global citizens?
SPITPLAY are a new Berlin post-wave noise duo, Godzilla meets Eurythmics. Their music features: a relentlessly straight 90’s drum machine, a distorted mantra-monotone bass, synthwave and noise sprinkles and vocal acrobatics oscillating between dreampop sweetness and Diamanda Galas performance. A flowery neologism for a feuilleton drawer would probably be Alien Goth Pop.
Founding members from the Cuntroaches and Chrome Animals.
Quanto valgono i corpi nell’era digitale? Questa è la domanda che si pone “Automine”: la performance attraverso cui il duo Hyenaz esplora il modo in cui i corpi creano valore, sia per sé che per gli altri.
I corpi, infatti, creano valore attraverso il lavoro fisico, attraverso il lavoro emotivo e anche attraverso il significato dei markers che li identificano: il genere, la sessualità, la storia. Tutti questi indicatori hanno un valore che cambia nello spazio e nel tempo, a seconda di come cambiano la società, la politica e il corpo stesso – che invecchia e si deteriora.
Con l’avvento del virtuale, e la sua sostituzione al reale, il corpo dovrebbe scomparire. Ma è davvero così? “Automine” cerca una risposta a questa domanda attraverso la musica, la riflessione e un’interpretazione critica dell’estetica queer contemporanea.
I live di Hyenaz sono performance immersive che chiedono a performer e pubblico di essere interlocutori attivi. La vicinanza dei corpi è di per sé una pratica di (ri)scoperta della politica della condivisione dello spazio fisico.
“Automine” riunisce il lavoro performativo e audio-visivo sviluppato attraverso “Foreign Bodies”: un progetto di ricerca che per 7 anni ha esplorato le relazioni tra corpi in movimento, corpi in relazione e corpi in resistenza.
Attraverso il corpo viscerale ed esplicito, Hyenaz indaga i meccanismi che trattano il corpo come un oggetto estraneo – qualcosa da gestire e controllare, un territorio sconosciuto anche a sé stesso, un “altro” da temere o annientare.
Prima e dopo la performance, Ono Collective curerà la selezione sonora con le sessioni di djing di mauromrk e Andlsia.
And they go along the ancient track on the plain almost like a silent grassy river on the traces of the ancient fathers…. (G. D’Annunzio, The Shepherds)
Since 2010, when Ferula Ferita brought back to light an ancient sound forgotten like Transhumance >>chièjne chìejne<< the word has taken substance, and has restored the importance of the meaning of Transhumance beyond what you see.
Since June 1st, 2006, the candidacy of “Transhumance: the Royal Trails” for UNESCO World Heritage has been active, presented by the Ministry of the Environment with the support of Abruzzo, Molise, Campania, and Puglia. This is an important recognition that must place us at the center of the path, and it is for this reason and for other directives that Masseria Jesce, theater of memory, transforms its Park Park into Micaelian Paths. (Donato Laborante)
Ausgehend von zwei Videoarbeiten entwickelt sich eine Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem *Tauben Performance Künstler* Eyk Kauly und dem hörenden Sound-Duo HYENAZ (Kate Fischer und Adrienne Teicher). Gemeinsam untersuchen sie mittels Gebärden, Tönen, Performance und Video, was es heißen könnte, die Bedingungen der Hörbarkeit zu queeren.
On the basis of two video works a collaboration develops between deaf performance artist Eyk Kauly and the hearing sound artists HYENAZ (Kathryn Fischer and Adrienne Teicher). Together they explore through sound, signs, and performance how conditions of audibility can be challenged.
Die offene Probe lädt das Publikum ein, folgende Fragen aufzugreifen: Wie inspirieren Körpersprache, Performance und Gebärden eine Soundproduktion jenseits gesprochener Sprache? Wie übersetzen sich Geräusche, Töne und Rhythmen – unter Beteiligung von Dolmetschenden – in körperliche Erfahrungen? Kann tönende Performance und performing Sound dazu beitragen, die Gegenüberstellung Taub versus hörend, oder andere Binaritäten, zu unterlaufen? Wie sind diese an Hören, Gehörtwerden und Hörbarkeit gebunden? Und was heißt Queering in diesem Kontext?
In this open rehearsal, the audience is invited to engage with the following questions: How does embodied performance and sign language inspire the creation of soundscapes? How does sound translate – with the help of sign language interpreters – into bodily experiences? Can sounding performance and performing sound help (re)imagine the perceived binary of Deaf and hearing, or other binaries? How are those bound to hearing, being heard and what does queering mean in the context of this audibility?
Audibility – an audio visual work by HYENAZ featuring Donato Laborante
In their audiovisual artwork Audibility, sound and movement artists Kathryn Fischer and Adrienne Teicher (HYENAZ) delve into the politics of sound, inviting viewers to reconsider their relationship to the audible and inaudible, to silence and silencing.
Filmed in an ancient man-made cave in the Murgia region of southern Italy, poet Donato Laborante delivers a poetic exploration of different forms of silence(s), holding in his hands the stalk of the Ferula Ferrita plant, an emblem of the Murgia’s unique ecology.. The plant’s presence becomes an integral part of the artwork, questioning the animacy of non-human and even non-animal; inviting into our consciousness this plant’s ability to speak, and more importantly–to provide consent to being part of an artwork.
HYENAZ suggest that audibility is deeply political and involves the willingness of the listener to hear differently; that this process is a mutual co-practice of speaking and listening and challenges the entire sonic environment to relate otherwise. This is intertwined with embodied, somatic experiences, requiring a shift in our listening practices and a willingness to embrace the subtle nuances of sound and language.
Audibility invites us to engage with silence not as a void, but as a dynamic and multifaceted presence. HYENAZ implore us to listen attentively, to seek out the whispered voices that emerge from the depths of silence–even to hear silence as something other than what we think it is–and to recognize the profound interplay between sound and silence in shaping our understanding of the world.
Through their rigorous processes of deep listening and field recording, HYENAZ capture the inherent sonic richness of their environment, transforming these raw sounds into a tapestry of auditory experiences. Their work encourages us to question the neutrality of sound archiving, recognizing the transformative power of manipulating and reinterpreting recorded sounds.
HYENAZ posit that archived sounds, whether human, non-human, animate, or inanimate, acquire a new existence, becoming intersubjective entities with the potential to give or withhold consent. They advocate for a respectful approach towards the auditory realm, acknowledging the agency of each sound source and its place within the broader sonic landscape.
16 December 2023 – 13 January 2024 at Neurotitan Gallery – Berlin – Germany – curator: Viviana Druga URBAN WITCHES not BITCHES: Beast from the East
19 October 2023 – 7 December 2023 at Galerie 35m2 – Prague – Czechia – curator: Anežka Januschka Kořínková
ARTIST TEXT
sinews: holding our sh*t together
tereza silon and kathryn fischer
if we roll this ball long enough will all the shit transmute to gold? and do we want it or do we just humbly and nobly accept the shit? we are not like scarabs making something so precious we would then have to roll it in front of us till the end of times, but if we want to we could. only – our shit is beautiful – at least to each other. we say it like that. but maybe all shit is beautiful once it is shaped a bit and acknowledged as a part of a truly complex and spectral existence, as a part of human experience that is both metaphysical, expansive and simultaneously falling hard onto the lines of the eco-socio-political matrices. it is not that i burn so much incense i cannot smell its stench. but this shit is quite pure. confusing in beautiful ways, contradictory as in holding generative tensions, but not exclusive. this is why we have such strong sinews. sinews, to hold it. we are the sinews and sinuous – as in not straight. although the way we are together is often quite straight forward.
what are the conditions for audibility? sometimes we put our heads on pillows. we edge adjacent to sleep. sometimes we bend our bodies in stretching shapes, faces close to the ground, or smelling our skin, close our eyes and lean into the ear. sometimes we are in motion, sight soft focused, an active listening while walking, cycling. these are conditions where my attention shifts to the auditory and i finally listen.
it is mostly in headphones that i hear your voice. your voice a flame in an infinite darkness. when i feel undone and un-whole your voice is flickering at my inner ear, there where i am most vulnerable. node becomes guide, transcending distance.
your words like so often flutter around me, haptic. an occasional car and birds outside of the open window. the soundscape implies a non-dual nature of the outside and inside (of the window) and presences and absences that too are not an opposite of one another, intimacy of it all. non-dual and perhaps non-binary. i often miss you but not like i miss other people. yes, a coffee in the same neighbourhood more often would be nice, more touch and embraces would be nice, but it is rare that you would not feel present in my life.
in these porous spaces there is a certain silence emerging from our folded bodies as we listen, as we create proximity. it is the deep listening kind which engenders trust, through which one feels heard, with which one can finally also speak. one speaks because one feels audible. then we can be reflected, challenged, validated, processed. an offering of how we, how i, could see differently. you ask me, could i shift my perspective?
and now what’s that strange sound in my throat? i am speaking with the trust of being heard.
i do not have to deal with your ghosts so much because i can deal with you as a whole human – the ghosts included. i ask you questions because you told me when i asked you what questions are inappropriate that i can ask you anything – hard questions too – and that you will try to answer. this is a game we play. we dare. it could be edgy but it is mostly edgy because i get to feel what i was told to disown. it is edgy but not so sharp. and sometimes we also speak just to share the small uneventful annoyances and joys and pleasures of the everyday. i am aware how dumb some things can sound but you give them space anyways, because you trust my sense-making apparatus. i say them anyways and then something transforms. so many very important moments passed between us as uneventful – but not unnoticed.
as an equal, sometimes you remind me i too can be held. and that to hold one another in general is a deep and sensuous desire of mine with people who also know (how to carry) their own weight intimately – figuratively and literally. something that grew more and more complex despite me getting more and more skilled in it as i grow older.
we use our collective skin body to hold ourselves together–together together. together despite the individualization of the i that is more than the i can handle. we use our voices to hold our mourning–and our joy. as nodes of trust for each other. as diversified relata, away from the ease of the most proximate warm body. (no one person can hold everything and certainly not only the adjacent her/him/them). that is terrifying–no–its new, always new. si-new. sí, sí, sí. new. this multitude of nodes holding me, holding them. we hold that.
i can easily speak of love, my love for you, the love we share, the love we feel for the world and other parts of our network and the pain and frustration and fear and misunderstandings too. there is no denial in it and nothing constructed. you – both in singular and plural. in one body and many. things i have not dreamt possible just a couple of years ago, because it is only understood experientially, over time. it takes time to slowly re-learn to trust and you might have had to watch me wail gutteraly once or twice or thrice. it is experiential, but not ossified the way old friendships might get. we change all the time. but at the same time it is hard to speak (of it), to utter, because it does not belong to neat categories. we use the words we know and we carve them into new shapes. yes it is a very queer experience but at the same time a deeply familiar one, a deeply human one. and yet sometimes all this intimacy feels so alien(ating) in the world that is communicating so much but where sometimes so little gets to be truly cherished.
you need a familial (or a few, always). a dedication sealed with ´i am still here and staying´ in a world where so many relationships are transactional and based on disposability and yet it is a world which can be very very pained and yet on whose goodness we do not want to ever give up.
we draw thin curtains around our cochlea, around our inner home, our listening home. the thin skin body we call home. this tough yet porous framing is what we need–or perhaps merely what we have–to hold our space. an imperfect circle we have drawn around our bodies. our bodies are laid bare, vulnerable, splayed in every direction, pulled apart but stretching–stretching because we are holding each other, all of us relata. sinews holding each other in fragile tension.
but even if the world is held together by the tension, it may be the opposite, some sort of softness and not the tension that undoes us in the end. the suspended undulating timelessness of someone´s very simple presence.
acceptance of discomfort is sometimes the most radical thing and we are both good at it and absolutely useless with it. we still fight. i wish there was time in this capitalist strata to have all THIS with many others, too. the invitation into this for a moment is something to start with.
CURATORIAL TEXT
Curatorial Text by Anežka Januschka Kořínková from Galerie 35m2
Výstavní projekt Sinews: holding our sh*t together Mad Kate a Terezy Silon je druhým příspěvkem ke konceptu radikálního štěstí, který se tentokrát na rozdíl od projektu Rotující štěstí zaměřeného na individualizované hledání štěstí a jeho prožívání obrací k našim vzájemným mezilidským interakcím a jejich kultivaci. Teprve porozuměním a upevňováním našich vzájemných vazeb a vztahů s okolím můžeme dosáhnout určité změny ve společnosti, která bude mít v důsledku vliv na vytvoření lepších životních podmínek pro všechny.
Prostor Galerie 35M2 je prostřednictvím poloprůhledných textilií, dodávajících pocit bezpečí a intimity, přetvořen v místo určené k učení se naslouchání, sdílení a budování blízkosti. K tomuto procesu učení dochází skrze poslech zvukových nahrávek, které vznikaly v průběhu let jako součást osobní korespondence mezi Kate a Terezou sdílející intimní momenty z jejich života ústící v rozhovory komentující společenská témata jako různé modely vztahů, zdraví, nemoc, stárnutí, sexualitu, gender, potlačující a mocenské struktury a mnoho dalších. Vzájemným nasloucháním jedna/jeden druhé/druhému se spolu s námi učí jak být empatičtí vůči odlišné životní zkušenosti druhých a nepřestávat snít či dokonce bojovat za alternativní (možná utopické) prostory budoucnosti. Osobní je politické.
The exhibition project Sinews: holding our sh*t together by Kathryn Fischer and Tereza Silon is the second contribution to the concept of radical happiness, which – as opposed to the Rotating Happiness project that focused on the individualized search for happiness – examines our own interpersonal interactions and their cultivation.
Through the use of textiles, giving a sense of safety and intimacy, the space of Gallery 35M2 is transformed into a place that encourages listening, sharing, and building closeness. The rooms are filled with echoes of the sound recordings – an excerpts of a personal correspondence between Kathryn and Tereza – made over the course of several years. They share (with each other and now with us) intimate moments from their lives, often resulting in commentary about social issues such as various models of relationships, health, illness, aging, sexuality, gender, oppressive structures and power structures and many more. As simple an act as recording an audio track, allows them to practice and strengthen their friendship through listening and learning about the experiences of others.
It is only through understanding and strengthening of our interconnections and relationships with our environment that we can bring about any societal change that will ultimately result in an improvement of the affective micro-politics. The personal is political.
t𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒛𝒂 s𝒊𝒍𝒐𝒏 (ona/she/they/none&all) is an interdisciplinary artist working mostly as a performer, dancer, occasional facilitator, bodyworker, poet, writer and experimental herbalist with a foundation in clinical naturopathy and a deep interest in reframing healing as less weighed down and discriminatory happening(s). in the long term, they work with embodiment and physicality, feminist queer perspectives, socialnatural ecologies, collective body/ies and a desire to open spaces for generative intimacy/ies despite extractive systems we are forced to inhabit. after years spent working with and in collective settings, tereza is currently working on her first authorial performance with a team and continues as a collaborator with individual artists offering reflective dialogue and mutual learning and practical enhancement of the magic and as a guest in collectives and aligned institutions interested in nuanced conversations. reclaiming the old interest in voicework and bdsm/kink and the non-denominational awe combined with the research of the human, the vegetal and beyond, new pathways for expression are currently taking shape. she has worked with and has been hosted by display, ini prostor, studio alta, can serrat (esp), ways house (hu), outsideininsideout (de, cz), buchapotheke at grüntaler9 (de), y:events series/divadlo x10, kafkárna, the institute of anxiety, plato and others. in the past year she worked with kathryn fischer, marie čtveráčková, sofia rubinstein, victor and lucie králíková, centering both the queer and the folkloric approaches and grassroot origins and craving for more ´useless´ beauty and sensuousness, aware of clichés and some pitfalls, too. their ultimate desire at the moment is the possibility to play in generative ways – for all
Performance with Ambrita Sunshine and Mad Kate Premiere: alpha nova & galerie futura on 6 & 7 September 2023 // 19:00
photo Hanna Schaich
>>sweating together<< is a deep listening experience, duet and discussion-performance that explores the affective and emotional experience of performing work—where work is the labor of care, the labor of survival and the labor of creativity.
Ambrita Sunshine and Mad Kate present a movement dialogue embodying their own somatic discomfort in work and in relation to work. Utilising and celebrating the release of Mad Kate’s EP “SWEAT Kumasi,” a sound work composed from interviews and atmospheres about the topic of labour, they invite the audience not only to witness, but to dialogue as co-conspirators and empaths who may relate as oppositional, as the same, or as something inbetween.
As (always already) racialized, classed and sexualized bodies, we do not sweat alone, we sweat with each other, we sweat beside and in relation to each other. We sweat because it is uncomfortable what can be found there. We sweat together because we work (on being together). We sweat together because the dialogue is difficult. We sweat.
TEAM
Performers: Ambrita Sunshine and Mad Kate Dramaturgy: Rebecca Ajnwojner Sound Design: Mad Kate Photography and Videography: Hanna Schaich Lights and Sound Technician: Adrienne Teicher Production Assistant: Dana Tucker
PHOTO GALLERY
gefördert von Musikfonds / funded with support from Musikfonds
Die Stiftung Preußische Seehandlung vergibt im 40. Jubiläumsjahr der Stiftung den Theaterpreis Berlin an Sivan Ben Yishai. Die Dramatikerin ist laut Jury „am Firmament des deutschsprachigen Theaters erschienen wie ein Komet“.
Der Theaterpreis Berlin wird seit 1988 von der Stiftung Preußische Seehandlung im Rahmen des Berliner Theatertreffens verliehen. Er ist mit 20.000 Euro dotiert und zeichnet Personen aus, die sich in besonderer Weise durch ihr Lebenswerk oder herausragende Einzelleistungen um das deutschsprachige Theater verdient gemacht haben. Die Jury begründet ihre Entscheidung für Sivan Ben Yishai wie folgt:
„Das Prädikat ‚radikal‘ mag überstrapaziert sein. Für die unlängst in der Kritiker*innenumfrage der Zeitschrift Theater heute zur Dramatikerin des Jahres 2022 Gewählte passt es perfekt. Radikal ist ihr Mut, radikal ist, wie sie die Suche nach dem richtigen Ausdruck in ihrem Schreiben sichtbar macht und dabei das Situative des Theaters selbst mitthematisiert. Und wie dieses Schreiben dabei immer unbequem bleibt und Reibung nicht nur aushält, sondern offensiv einfordert. Bei den Regisseur*innen, die es mit ihm aufnehmen, wie beim Publikum.“
Die Entscheidung zur Auszeichnung traf die Preisjury: Sabine Leucht (Theaterkritikerin und Mitglied der Theatertreffen-Jury), Prof. Dr. Matthias Warstat (Theaterwissenschaftler an der Freien Universität Berlin), Matthias Pees (Intendant der Berliner Festspiele) und in beratender Funktion Carolin Hochleichter (Mitglied des neuen Leitungsteams des Theatertreffens) und Yvonne Büdenhölzer (ehemalige und langjährige Leiterin des Theatertreffens).
Mit — Sivan Ben Yishai Dramatikerin & friends: Patrícia Bateira, Guy Cohavi, Modjgan Hashemian, HYENAZ, Moran Sanderovich, Shahrzad Rahmani, Nir Vidan, Marie Luise Würth
Marie Bues, Niko Eleftheriadis, Ruth Feindel, Martina Grohmann, Tobias Herzberg, Amit Jacobi, Christopher-Fares Köhler, Mehdi Moradpour, Mazlum Nergiz Laudatio
With generous support – Prozessförderung – from the #TakeHeart of Fonds Darstellende Künste in the context of NEUSTART KULTUR – Peaches and Clusterfuck were involved in an intensive process during the Autumn of 2022 to learn from each others’ practices and deepen our knowledge of our work together. Thanks to Callie’s for the space.
